sutton059

from the museum collection

Gift of G.A. de Graag (PD)  http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.205698 https://www.rijksmuseum.nl Here is another wonderful Julie deGraag , for no reason other than I love it and want you to love it too.  Look at those shoulder stripes!

By patricia m from france (les animaux 55) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons From a French book of drawing instructions titled "Les Animaux tels qu'ils sont" (Animals As They Are):  here is how you draw Le Herisson, The Hedgehog.  Bonus! Le Porc-Epic (porcupine!) at the bottom! Would you like to see the whole book?  It has instructions for a very large variety of animals, and is lovely in its own right. Here you are .

Smithsonian American Art Museum http://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1977.92 "Sit for me just a little," I imagine J. Alden Weir saying to his wife Anna sometime round 1890. "I want to paint you exactly as you are right now."  The result was this small impressionistic oil "Portrait of a Lady with a Dog (Anna Baker Weir),"  kept in the family till the 1970's.  (The dog's name was Gyp.)  Weir was a member of "The Ten," the breakaway group of American artists that challenged stylistic and exhibition norms of the time. An interesting and detailed account of Weir can be found on the NPS.gov site of his farm, here .

from the museum collection

thanks pixabay  Something lighthearted today:  a random find at McSweeney's Internet Tendency. "My sixteenth cat lies and lies.  My seventeenth cat keep anonymously commenting 'looks stupid' on YouTube videos of cute babies."  It goes downhill from there.  "What My Pets Say About Me," by Jeff Alberts .

thanks british library (PD) Wolves: upright, pointy ears.  Most dogs: floppy ears. Hares and wild rabbits: Ears up.  Many domesticated rabbits: Soft floppy ears.  Boars/pigs? Check. Goats/goats? Check.  Cats/Cats? Um - that one doesn't work; they're all up and pointy, wild or no. (Cats: Throwing wrenches in the works since...ever.) Still, the ear phenomenon is prevalent enough that it sparks curiosity.  And when I ran across this short, entertaining animation on the subject at NPR, I learned the latest research on why those ears (and those shorter muzzles and those spotted coats).  A publication by Charles Darwin is namechecked: "The variation of plants and animals under domestication."  Want to idly flip through some of that?  You can find an introduction and several editions here .

Goldfinch, being wild birds, aren't pets for us today.  However, in a book of pet care dated 1862, I found this (unattributed) story of a beloved pet goldfinch's last years. I myself until lately possessed a goldfinch which I would not have parted with for an entire aviary of the choicest songsters. He was thirteen years old when he came into my keeping, and his eyes were beginning to fail him. They grew weaker and weaker, till at last the glare of the sunlight was more than he could bear, and I made him curtains of green gauze for which he was very grateful, and never failed to reward me with a bit of extra good music when they were pulled round his cage on sultry afternoons. When he was seventeen years old he went quite blind, but that did not at all interfere with the friendship that existed between us. He knew my footstep as I entered the room, he knew my voice,—I do believe he knew my cough and sneeze from any one else's in the house. He was extremely fond of cabbage-s...

Gift of Estate of Samuel Isham, 1914 www.metmuseum.org 2018 is the year of the Earth Dog.  Here's a dog year surimono  calendar created in Japan in 1814, with a jolly furball wishing you the best (and also wishing you would play ball, by the look of it).  Were you born in a dog year?  You can check what element type your dog year is here . 

from the museum collection smooch!